Note: I am posting my old blog entries from elsewhere on the internet. This entry was originally posted on 10/08/08.
First of all, congrats to the MESSENGER team for another successful flyby of Mercury! Follow the link for a great picture; there’s some really beautiful crater rays on this side of Mercury. Emily at the Planetary Society Blog has as always a great write-up.
Emily also has information on the Earth-impacting asteroid 2008 TC3, which was discovered on Oct 6 and hit the Earth on Oct 7. This was a tiny asteroid, and a very small fireball, but it is also the first time an asteroid has been observed before hitting the Earth. Since atmospheric entry occurred over the Sudan there are no images of the fireball itself, but there is a report of a KLM pilot flying in the area observing a flash at about the right time.
Finally, over at my new home on Cassini we’re very excited about Thursday’s coming flyby of the moon Enceladus. This will be our 5th flyby of Enceladus, the moon with the geysers erupting out of its south pole. Closest approach is 25 km (16 miles), which is, basically, crazy. We will actually be flying through the plume of material being ejected from the surface by the geysers, allowing our various ion, dust, and particle analyzers to get some great measurements. Later in October we will do another flyby, though this one will be further away and will be primarily used by our imagers and spectrometers. There is an Enceladus Flyby Blog where you can read posts from my fellow Cassini team members over the next few days.
Due to the nature of the mission, Cassini requires a lot longer lead time in sequence development than Phoenix did, so the commands to perform these activities were actually put together months and months ago. I’m learning the ropes by following around people working on a sequence of activities that won’t be carried out until next April. So, at this point it is all out of our hands, but we are all eagerly anticipating the results.